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Conflict’s Creativity

Most of the breakthrough inventions came during warring times.

When humanity faced the wicked Covid- 19 virus it made its vaccine discoveries in record times.

These facts invite the question; do we need conflicts to boost our creative minds?

One source of conflict is cognitive dissonance. When our thinking and beliefs do not conform to what we do we experience cognitive dissonance. This lack of agreement between what we think is right and what we do is a source of tension. It is a kind of creative tension.

One example is when you smoke while believing smoking is harmful to your health then there is a disagreement between what you do and what you think.

Can we then direct intentionally induced conflicts to boost creativity?

One example is leading teams. If the team members become homogenized the absence of conflict between team members may slow down creativity. A team leader might consider inviting a consultant to challenge their understanding of an issue. The gap between what the team members do and what the consultant suggested might stir their minds and generate creative ideas.

Ideas are like molecules. The more they interact and bombard each other the more likely a reaction will proceed.

Tension moves team members out of their comfort zone. The team members do not like to live in tension. If the tension is strong enough one way of removing it is by generating ideas that bombard with each other and suddenly a creative idea emerges that settles the conflict.

One other way of doing it is having teams with opposing ideas about what caused a problem. This polarity of the team might stir them to each party searching for a new idea or approach to prove their point of view. The tension of disagreement between team members may lead to the generation of many ideas and creative ideas to emerge.

We live in a world of increasing cognitive dissonance. A scientist who believes in God may find research results that throw doubts on his faith. The scientist might get a creative idea to help him settle his annoying cognitive dissonance.

A Moslem who believes bank interests are illegal and against God’s will may have to work for a bank. Now, he is suffering from his faith and work being in disagreement.

A woman may be a supporter of immigrants having the right to live peacefully in her country. An immigrant woman gets a job the native woman applied for and is lost to the immigrant. Now, the native woman might have a disagreement between her beliefs and her reactions.

Ali Anani
Ali Ananihttps://www.bebee.com/@ali-anani
My name is Ali Anani. I hold a Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia (UK, 1972) Since the early nineties I switched my interests to publish posts and presentations and e-books on different social media platforms.

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2 CONVERSATIONS

  1. It may seem paradoxical to combine creativity with aggressiveness but it seems that it is not if we refer to the becoming of the psychic energy that is released. I don’t imagine, however, that to develop creativity you have to generate tension. In general terms, I believe tension can be a stimulus, an incentive to production, a boost to creativity. But it cannot be understood as “pressure” which, instead, is the constant and continuous emotional weight that is unloaded on us.
    I personally consider creativity to be the result of the complementarity between deduction and intuition, between reason and imagination, between emotion and reflection, between divergent thinking and convergent thinking.
    In relation to the latter, in reality, neither thought is better than the other. There may simply be the problem that a person becomes too dependent on one method of thinking. Getting carried away by divergent thinking can lead to endless ideas and not finding the solution you really need to the conflict. On the other hand, getting too carried away with convergent thinking can cause the person to have no new ideas and become paralyzed in analyzing the problem and possible solution.
    The secret is to find the balance. The creative process, thinking and approach to the problem have to change on some occasions to find the best solutions. To select the best divergent ideas, it is necessary to determine the potential of each of them, that is, to analyze them, and how is this achieved? Through convergent thinking.

    • Your great comment Aldo serves a perfect example of the tension I have reading it and I mean “healthy tension”.
      The tension started reading this from your comment “In general terms, I believe tension can be a stimulus, an incentive to production, a boost to creativity. But it cannot be understood as “pressure” which, instead, is the constant and continuous emotional weight that is unloaded on us.”

      You have a great thought. Many researchers refer to what I call “green tension” because green is the color of creativity. It is exactly what you described. It is also balanced tension because it serves in handling both extremes such as divergent and convergent thinking which you mentioned rightly in your comment.

      The other type is “red tension” and that is the unhealthy tension that serves negatively in stressing our brains and drain it. It is red because it is dangerous.
      I am writing a post that relates to this tension with a metaphor. I shall refer and quote you in this post.

      I value greatly your comment.

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